Rainbow Residents Say 'No' to Dollar Tree

*This article has been updated

Rainbow residents - Dollar Tree's potentially new neighbors - have packed meeting rooms for the past two nights, making it known that they are against the Fortune 500 company's proposal to build a one-million-square-foot distribution center in their back yards.

Since last week, many homeowners with properties adjacent to the proposed building site have approached town boards and commissions expressing a multitude of grievances, including the devaluation of their homes, noise and light pollution, the amount of time they were given notice before the proposal came before town committees, increased truck traffic, and an overall decline in the quality of life throughout the neighborhood.

Along with their concerns, an apparent chasm between the intentions of town officials and the hopes of Dollar Tree's potential new neighbors.
During a standing-room-only Town Planning and Zoning Commission meeting Tuesday night, Town Planner Eric Barz told commission members that while many residents have made their concerns clear, commission members would not be able to vote against the company's site plan unless there was a violation with planning and zoning regulations.

Monday night, about ten residents addressed the Town Council's Finance Committee in a packed Ludlow Room, urging the committee's three sitting council members to decide against giving Dollar Tree a tax abatement, and vote against the project as a whole.

Upon hearing their concerns and engaging in discussions with Dollar Tree representatives, committee members were split on supporting the project, but the democratic majority (comprising Deputy Mayor Alan Simon and town councilman Randy McKenney) conveyed that bringing Dollar Tree to town would do more good than harm for the majority of Windsor residents.

"… Over the past ten years, Windsor has the fifth lowest tax increases in the state of Connecticut, which really is a remarkable achievement," Simon told Rainbow residents Monday. "A good reason why that is, is because residences account for 60 percent of property taxes. That means businesses account for the other 40 (percent).

"I think you can imagine if that percentage were 80-percent residential, like it is in other towns. Your tax bills would be substantially higher for  services than what you're paying today."

Simon added that a decision against Dollar Tree's distribution center would be a decision to "forego substantial property taxes to the town."

Residents did receive some support Monday from Town Councilman Donald Jepsen (R). Jepsen told the Finance Committee that the new tax revenue Dollar Tree would bring in, which is estimated to be about $1.5 million, is essentially a drop in the bucket that is the town's budget, and it would not greatly affect the town's ability to afford services like education.

President of the Winterwood Homeowners' Association Colleen Fontaine presented a number of requests to town officials Tuesday, Monday and in written form to town council members.

Should the project be approved by all appropriate town boards and committees, the homeowners' association is requesting:

• The employee entrance be relocated from Stone Road to International Drive to alleviate "the biggest concern of increased truck traffic on Stone Rd." If it cannot be reloated, they are requesting the installation of a sidewalk on Stone Rd. and expanded shoulders on both sides of the road.
• Dollar Tree consider a closed campus "similar to Walgreens," restricting employees from leaving the campus until their shift has been completed to decrease noise pollution and the number of "wanderers during the day" disrupting homes in the neighborhood that home school their children.
• The town add signage to the end of Winterwood and Stone Road and Merriman and Stone Road reading "Private Association, Not a Throughway."

Fontaine presented the town with a petition of 150 signatures saying "no" to the Dollar Tree project.